SIAS Chapter 13.1

Happy Vesak Day, everyone!

The main door of the assembly hall was a wooden door with two openings. Entering into it was a small hall with two earthen stoves built inside.

Four educated youths, two men and two women, sat together to eat at one of the tables beside the stove.

Zhou Qiang and Zhao Fang came from the table next to another earthen stove.

According to Zhao Fang, there should be two male educated youths who were not here.

There was a dark doorway at the end of the front hall.

Although it was approaching evening, the afterglow of the setting sun was still there, and it was not dark at all outside.

But after entering the educated youth center, the front hall was fine, and people could be seen clearly. However, the doorway was very deep inside.

The skylight reflected from the removed alley roof allowed people to vaguely see that there was a deep alley two meters wide inside.

The left and right sides seemed to be walls made of adobe bricks, and there were holes in some places, stuffed with straw and rags.

There were some piles of dark stuff against the walls.

Zhou Qiang and Zhao Fang had already returned to the front hall to eat.

The newly educated youths looked at this dark alley and trembled for a while.

“This is too dark!” Wang Lingling complained.

Li Mengxue reached into her bag and took out a mini flashlight.

Yi Qingqing took advantage of the light, opened the small bag, and pulled out a large flashlight.

The large flashlight was very in line with the characteristics of this era. It came from her mother Zhao Xianglan’s dowry. After so many years, it was just a little old, but it was still strong.

It was heavy in the hand, and although the light it emitted was not as bright as Li Mengxue’s small flashlight and was slightly dark yellow, it was enough.

“Qingqing, please give me some light. I also brought a flashlight.” Wang Lingling also started rummaging around.

Her flashlight was packed in a big bag. It was similar to Yi Qingqing’s, but it was brand new.

With three flashlights, everyone finally saw the situation in this alley clearly.

The deep alley was more than thirty meters deep. There was a wooden door every three meters on the left and right sides. There was a small window next to the door. There were about twenty rooms in total.

The rooms next to the front hall were all padlocked, and the darkness before was filled with firewood.

This meant that all educated youths could be assigned to a separate room, which made them feel better.

The first half of the alley still had a relatively lively atmosphere, and the door had obviously been cleaned. There was a candlelight shining through the crack in the door of one room, so someone must be there.

But after passing these eight occupied rooms, the further inside they became, the more deserted and dilapidated they became.

The layout of the rooms was similar, about fifteen square meters in size, with an earthen bed inside.

The best part was that there was a simple earthen stove next to the kang in the house, but it was also in a state of disrepair and there was no furniture or anything else.

The adobe bricks were not very tight, and some walls even leaked air. Some of the tiles were not very tight, and they might even leak.

Moreover, there was a thick layer of dust in every room, and there was not even a place to sit.

The joy that everyone had a small room just now disappeared suddenly.

“Can people really live here?” Wang Lingling couldn’t believe it.

“There’s nothing I can do even if I can’t live there. I’m really tired and can’t walk anymore, so I chose this room.” Liu Chunxing hammered her waist and occupied the outside room first.

“You can just live across from me. I’ll help you clean up the kang first. Can you lend me the flashlight later?”

“Of course, it’s no problem,” Wang Lingling said.

She had just suspected Chunxing, and she lent her one yuan without hesitation. Borrowing a flashlight now was nothing.

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